Where's the new benchmark for pecuniary excess? At Ronaldo's prospective £560,000 a week as he races towards £18m a year in Madrid? At Stephen Hester's Royal Bank of Scotland rescue level, £1.2m heading for £15m? But no: apparently no such giddy limits apply. The line in the financial sand, now drawn by David Cameron and Fleet Street alike, is just £196,250 a year. The benchmark is Gordon Brown.

Brown, on behalf of his groaning ministers, has ordered a pay freeze this difficult year. Well, he would, wouldn't he? Margaret Thatcher, feeling the chill of 1979, did the same. Tony Blair, triumphant in 1997, exercised parallel restraint for a while. No 10 traditionally believes that you ease the pain by sharing it. Yet watch those mirrors glint and glide …

If you're an ex-minister with expertise in the bank, you make your money when you've lost office, not when you're struggling to cope with a department. Observe Patricia Hewitt, David Blunkett and friends as they accumulate directorships and consultancies in the £150,000 league (pending Brown's supposed clean sweep of MPs taking second, third and fourth jobs). But if you're a prime minister, then the really big paydays come once you're not just out of power but out of parliament, once you're a celebrity with reflected lustre to sell.

The easiest target here is Tony Blair. No one can cite speculation-free figures, but let's say £12m or so in the first flush of leaving office: £4m for penning his memoirs, £2m from JPMorgan Chase, the odd £500,000 from Zurich Financial Services, upwards of $100,000 a pop for lecturing America's very rich, plus £140,000 per annum in everlasting pension and office dues from a grateful nation. You don't get that at the BBC.

And before we get lost in another bout of mere Blair-bashing, just look at John Major's array of directorships and chairmanships over the years. They don't call the Carlyle investment group the masters of the world (semi-retired) for nothing. Just look, too, at the Thatcher Foundation in its first halcyon phase of total opacity. Brown, when his moment to walk away comes, won't really be playing Mr Chips on a teacher's wage. He'll be sitting on multinational boards, joining old statesmen's clubs, flogging his life story to the Sunday Times, and generally making sure the manse roof is proofed for many decades to come.

Hypocritical? Not particularly, when you study the ways of these globalised times. Barack Obama rates $400,000 a year plus allowances at the White House, a sum neither Goldman nor Sachs would get out of bed for: he'll make as many millions as he wants later, when there are presidential libraries to be built and children's inheritances to be secured. Why does <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Pinto_Balsem%C3%A3o" title="Francisco <FEFF>Pinto Bals
Francisco Pinto Balsemão sit on the Daily Mail board? In part, because he was once PM of Portugal. And
Brian Mulroney on the Independent board? In part, because he was twice PM of Canada. There's an international currency here, an unstated bargain that says "keep me in homes, food and security now, and I'll make up for it when the arc lights dim".

You can easily spot public servants topping Brown's £196,000. Try a Metropolitan police commissioner on £235,000, dozens of university vice-chancellors leaving Gordon behind, even your local GP grossing over £200,000 a year when the practice is perfect. Benchmark Brown is bargain basement stuff – or would be if it reflected anything remotely real.